Herbert

Stnte

The “‘Peat Bog Soldiers’? — political prisoners in the notorious Emsl
tt Beyer, sentenced to prison for distributing the perfectly legal Commu
Informed that he will shortly be shipped to Emsland, where the prisoners ha
need to 18 months imprisonment by the

(Chorus )

To the bog

(Chorus)

(Final chorus)

pe To the bog

The Peat Bog Soldiers

Far and wide as the eye can wander
Heath and‘ bog are everywhere. - ,
Not a bird sings out to greet us.

Oaks are standing gaunt and bare.

We are the peat bog soldiers;
We're marching with our spades

Up and down the guards are pacing
No one, no one can go through.
Flight would mean a sure death facing;
Guns and barbed wire greet our view.

But for us there is mo complaining,
Winter will in time be past;

One day we shall cry rejoicing,
Homeland dear you're mine at last.

Then will the peat bog soldiers
March no more with

their spades

er ee LONDON
the aise am “warmly welcomes”
the py ite of M. Mendes-France,
tan; a Prime Minister, for a
dent ase-fire in Indochina, Presi-
® Chi Minh said last week.
toadea “ added, in an interview
"dig. & by Democratic Viet Nam
°y of We must frustrate the poli-
Rta cae United States imperial-

Seney, hinder and undermine the
nference,”

atite in 10. te establishment | of
83 has b Ochina,” even if pro-
€en slow, he said.

Slot
Week 4 Teturned to Geneva last
nek M €n on Monday this
Mai pa ndes-France and Chou
ave also returned.

Ut y,
.) Metin Foster Dulles. refused

Ho Chi Minh supports plea
of French for early truce

He declared that there were no
present plans but that he will send
for his. return Bedell Smith, his
deputy.

The French garrison in Red
River delta town of Hung Yen has
been cut off by units of the Peo-
ple’s Army.

Hung Yen, about 12 miles north
of Phuly, key town the French
‘abandoned last week, is on the

@ ¢ “hedge of the new line the French
Way for uetence “has paved the}, it

tried to set up after their retreat

from Phuly.

Strong People’s Army activity is
reported, too, from central Viet
Nam where the French are being
forced back to coastal positions
and many forts have fallen. In
southern ‘Viet Nam several out-
posts near Saigon havé been cap-

tured.

«

TRUNG GLA
AUD

BE CONFERENCE ¥

Latest map shows battle lines around Hanoi.

KURT MEYER

War criminal Kurt Meyer will
be released in September from
the British prison at Werl, it has
been announced.

and concentration camp in North Germany
nist ee a the National Reunification of ° Germany,”
ve to do back-breaking force s. H
‘ West German Supreme Court at Karlsruhe. : ae ee es Me
msland concentration camp became world famous early in the Nazi era. owing to the fact that Socialists Communes and trade uni

: : union
membets herded together there in 1933 wrote and .compos-
ed the song-‘‘Peat Bog Soldiers,”

defiance of their SS guards.

before me.”’
* * *
The criminal court at Dortmund,
British Zone of West Germany, has
confirmed the sentence of “high

in 1933.

On December 12, 1933, just 11
months after Hitler came to power,
Dortmund Court found Communist
leader Josef Ledwohn guilty of
“high treason” because of his un-

derground work against Hitler.

treason” passed by a Nazi court!

are on the march again.

has

‘which they sung in
(An English translation of

the song is printed on this page.)

Writing from prison to his wife to give her the news,
Herbert Beyer said: ‘This just confirms what we stated at
the he the Be being taken is the same as in 1933.

_ 90 now 1 am going to become one of the peat bo
soldiers: thousands of the very best Germans ee hee

Since the Gestapo could not find
Ledwohn, sentence was not prom-
ulgated.

Now, 21 years later, the court
has _ blown the dust off the old
Nazi file, and sentenced Ledwohn
to 18 months imprisonment as a
result of the old Nazi conyiction.
Ledwohn is today a member of the
central board of the West German
Communist party.

government.

Schroeder declared that -the
time had come when the competi-
tive and conflicting work of sever-
al bodies collecting “security” in-
formation must be unified.

The effect of unification will be
that services which have already
been used in West Germany to
try to terrify not only Commun-
ists but also Social Democrats and
Liberals, will become more power-
ful than ever.

And they will be entirely under
the control of a man who was no
momentary wartime associate of
the Nazis but who joined them
long before the war. This is
Adenauer’s reply to the growing
criticism in West Germany of his
secret political police methods.

The government statement was
made on the second day of a two-
day debate arising out of an at-
tack made by Adenauer himself
on Dr. Reinhold Maier, former
Prime Minister of! Baden-Wuerrt-
temberg.

Maier was attacked because,
said Adenauer, he had “con-
nections with the East.” Aden-
auer, who was addressing his
/ Christian Democrat party, quoted
information from his state security
forces to prove the point.

This admission that the state se-
curity forces were being used to
check up even on member of the
political parties in the Adenauer
coalition caused widespread un-
easiness.

Maier later pointed out, that
the state security forces were a
revival of the Gestapo.

In the two-day debate opposi-
tion to Adenauer’s police methods
came from the Social Democrats.

Professor Carlo Schmidt, their
chief speaker and vite-president
of the Bundestag, accused the
Adenauer government of using this
‘police material in election cam-
paigns.

He warned that the federal se-
curity offices had become, in prac-
tice, not only the investigators
but the judges of whether people
should be employed.

If this went on it could easily
lead to people disappearing, per-
haps not behind the wall of con-
centration camps, “but behind the

(above). Now members of the

Ex-Nazi heads revived
Gestapo under Adenauer

BERLIN

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is to have a new style Gestapo. West German
security organs which are used as political police, are to be unified and. made more
efficient. the West German Bundestag (parliament) was told last week

The announcement was made by Dr. Gerhard Schroder, a former Nazi and
exponent of Hitler racial theories, who is now Minister of Interior in Adenauer’s

Two years ago, on a visit to Germa iti
ny, British Foreign
Secretary Anthony Eden reviewed a police euard of West Berlin .

West German police force are

being recruited into a new Gestapo.

MOSCOW

Pravda, Soviet Communist party
paper, reported “full solidarity”
in Stalingrad with the iappeal from
Coventry for a joint plea to the
United Nations for baaning the
hydrogen bomb.

_The Coventry appeal had . been
discussed “animatedly” in’ Stalin-
grad industrial plants, said the
paper. . ,

It was stated in Coventry on
June 19 that Alderman John Fen-
nell, Lord Mayor of the war-blitz-
ed city, had written to Jacob Malik,
Soviet ambassador in London, sug-
gesting that Coventry and Stalin-
grad should make such a joint
appeal.

barbed wire of suspicion,” he said.

Alderman Fennell suggested that
a meeting should be arranged be-

Stalingrad citizens back
Coventry H-ban appeal

tween representatives of the two
cities.

“The peoples of the world must
come together and make known
their detestation and horror of
such weapons ever being used by
any country,” he declared. “It is
felt that no two cities can focus
world attention so definitely as
can Stalingrad and Coventry work-
ing in unison.”

The decision to approach Stalin-
grad was made by the Coventry
City Council’s “Coventry and Stal-
ingrad Bond of Friendship Com-
mittee.”

Tass reported that at meetings
held in the Russian city “the rie
ers of Stalingrad expressed full
solidarity with the wish of the in-
habitants of Coventry.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 16, 1954 — PAGE 3